The topic for each monthly challenge derives from the themes in the 10 Building Blocks (picture below) that were designed by thousands of nurses, midwives and patients through ideas submitted to our crowdsourcing site. The 12 monthly challenges are all about people working together to help put these building blocks into action.

This blog provides a summary of the Challenges so far, and encourages everyone new to the programme to join in. It doesn't matter if you start blogging in December or try Breaking the Rules for your New Year's Resolution! The important thing is taking that first step and then making incremental steps to develop your own and collective agency for nursing to build the power to make a difference.

We now have more than 2,000 Ambassadors building positive perceptions, with nurses and midwives alike joining in the challenges. You can sign up here.

We started by reminding ourselves that our voice is important! That our views, opinions, and experiences matter. A blog gives us this space – and the opportunity to inspire others. My colleague Leigh Kendall wrote this fabulous blog for July's blogging challenge.

In suggesting that you “break the rules” for the August 30 day challenge, we weren't asking you to create havoc in your organisation! Rather, we were asking Ambassadors to think about the rules, customs, ways of working, habits, policies, and procedures that get in the way of great care and great team working. 'Rules' that restrict more than they enable deserve to be broken.

For September's challenge we joined up with the #HelloMyNameIs campaign and called on Ambassadors to show pride in our profession. The challenge was about being proud of our nursing and midwifery achievements by add our title and qualification to our email signature and social media bio, with a focus on how we introduce yourselves to patients, their family members and our colleagues.

October focused on celebrating diversity and valuing difference but also speaking out against exclusion and marginalisation. We asked Ambassadors to be creative in solving a difficult or complex problem at work or in the local community. To look wider than the normal groups involved in problem solving, looking beyond our community to see who could help and bring different perspectives and views. Consider who will strengthen our approach to thinking about the problem by widening networks and making better use of others' experience, skills and uniqueness, creating an environment where people can flourish.

During November we partnered with the Student Nurse Project and the Leadership Centre to focus on finding allies. We asked Ambassadors to start thinking about developing their local networks:

And finally, our current challenge is “Mentor a junior colleague or student or reverse mentor a senior nurse or midwife." Traditionally, mentoring is the long term passing on of support, guidance and (sometimes) advice. In the workplace it has tended to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague uses their greater knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace to support a more junior or inexperienced member of staff. This month we have put a particular emphasis on reverse mentoring where a more junior member of staff may have greater knowledge or experience in certain aspects of work or the workplace and they may act as the mentor. Mentoring can also take place peer-in-peer relationships.

Please do get involved and join the #NursingNowEngland movement. As important as taking part is, it's even better if you share your actions and experiences. Sharing learning with one another is part of building momentum and community! You can share with your own organisation; in the Ambassadors Forum (there's an active Facebook group); or on Twitter - my colleague Leigh has written some great tips for making sure your tweet counts!